Eastman DM2 tailpiece question

gbross

I’m new to this group.

I just purchased an Eastman DM2 guitar. I have a few questions.

1. The tailpiece has the letters DR embossed on it. What does that stand for? Django Reinhardt?
2. What should the string height at the 12th fret be?
3. How does one lower the action if need be?

Thanks. Hoping to learn much from this forum and website.

vanmalmsteen

DR stands for Django Reinhardt

A lot of people say 3mm is optimal for tone and overall sound but that’s a bit much for me, I usually go 2.5

Lowering the action is kind of the pain but it’s done by taping some sandpaper underneath the bridge feet and moving the bridge back-and-forth over the sandpaper until it’s lowered to desired height. It’s hard to describe but there’s a lot of posts here on the forum about the subject

ChristopheCarington

Hi @gbross - to add, I owned a DM2 for a year and played a few at NAMM. Their action is already pretty good by GJ standards, and kind of low compared to many other guitars.

Reading between the lines, I think the DM2 is one of the easiest playing GJ guitars on the market, but feels gnarly and hard coming from electric or flattop acoustics. I would try to stick with one pick you feel most comfortable with and practice for a few weeks before making any decisions on lowering or heightening the action.

However, I'm also assuming you had a 3rd party who are familiar with the Gypsy guitars set it up (like Michael's guy or *********** in Los Angeles).

pdg

The action shoul be lower for the 1st string than the 6th string, e.g., 2.1 mm for the 1st string, rising to 2.7 mm for the 6th string.

mac63000

Maybe goes without saying but be careful not to lower it too much, some guitars lose a lot of volume when the action is really low. If you're string height is too high, maybe swap the strings for Argentine 10s before deciding to lower the action. You could also get a second bridge and mess around with the height that way if you want a diy experiment.

Jose

You can try buying a second lowered bridge, that way you can save yourself a lot of headaches if you don’t like it you can swap it and go back to the original, this guitars are very sensitive to humidity and temperature changes and it always good to have a little bit of room for the top to move without fretbuzz If bridge is too low.

gbross

Thanks all.